Eric Lampe

SLUH Theology/Faith

10/4/06

 

FIVE COMMON THINKING ERRORS

 

1. Non Sequiturs

The thinking error called a “non sequitur” is Latin for “it does not follow.” When people us a non sequitur they have statements that are true and they make a conclusion that does not follow from these true statements. For example, not many people know that at the beginning of the Revolutionary War only ¼ of the population in America wanted to go to war.  People were very angry at the British, this is true, but ¾ of them did not want to go to war with a super power over it. In fact half the population was still loyal but just wanted to make some changes. So with only a small minority of the people wanting to go to war and a majority does not and many are still loyal to the crown then why did we go to war. It just did not follow. It was a thinking error at the time when the war broke out. To this day most people are happy that this error was made but none the less it did not follow from the premises at the time.

2. False and Vague premises.

In the case of false and vague premises the conclusion follows logically but the premises, or original statements, are false or vague. In the case of the Challenger Disaster there was a space shuttle set to launch and the engineers gave the Okay to launch so thus as should properly follow the shuttle was launched. However a short way into the sky the shuttle blew up because shuttle should not have been given the okay to launch in the first place. A thinking error was committed by the people who decided to launch the shuttle.

3. Ad Hominem

The thinking error called Ad Hominem in Latin means “against the person” and is used when someone does not attack a person’s argument but the person himself. In the book Harry Potter there was a term called “mudblood” which was the ultimate insult used for people who did not come from the offspring of witches or wizards.Hermoine Granger was one of these people and she also happened to be one of the smartest people in her grade at Howarts. So Draco Malfloy could not think of anything else against the person and out of jealousy of her intelligence he could only attack her as a person by calling her a mudblood. This was an example Ad Hominem.

4. Begging the Question

Begging the Question is a thinking error in which people try to make a point in an argument but while trying to make a point they assume that thing is already true. During the War on Terror, President George W. Bush made numerous speeches to the American nation saying that we should go into war with Iraq because they have weapons of mass destruction. Bush said we should go into the war on Iraq under the assumption that these weapons of mass destruction did in fact exist. It came to haunt Bush later on when weapons of mass destruction were not found and his popularity ended up decreasing greatly.

5. Red Herrings

                      Throwing out a “red herring” in an argument is to throw out a point that evokes emotion in someone just to distract them from your argument. In the 2004 presidential election one George W. Bush’s major campaign focuses was on the events of September 11th. He used the argument that he was in office during one of the most major nation tragedies in American history. He brought something into the political debate that wasn’t really so much about political issues as it was about evoking the strong emotions people had about September 11th that were still fresh in peoples minds at the time of the election. The method worked because Bush was reelected.

 

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